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Mohan Murjani, the celebrated fashion tycoon of the ’70s and ’80s, shared a close bond with world-renowned painter MF Husain, who passed away in 2011. Murjani’s family had known Husain for a long time – even before the latter had established himself as a painter par excellence.

“MFH was a good friend. He was like a father figure to us,” recalled Murjani, the man who partnered with American socialite Gloria Vanderbilt to create the world’s first ‘for-women’ jeans, and later bank-rolled Tommy Hilfiger to start his own line of fashion clothing.

“He used to come and stay with us whenever he visited New York. In fact, we always bought paintings directly from him,” Murjani said. Sometime around 2010, Murjani lost a famous Husain painting titled ‘The Mother Teresa’.

The 58-inch by 89-inch oil-on-canvas painting (as reported in NY Post) disappeared from a public storage facility in New York.

“The painting just disappeared from the facility… It’s really sad we don’t have it with us anymore,” said Murjani. “The insurance company investigated the incident, and paid us the insured value.”

According to the NY Post report, the MFH painting was in the custody of Ellsworth Lank Jr. who belongs to a family of fine-art movers. A Brooklyn Federal Court directed Lank to pay $850,000 (roughly Rs 6 crore) to the Lloyd’s of London, which is believed to have insured the MFH painting.

Asked about other artworks that he owns, Murjani preferred not to divulge too much about his private collection. He simply said, “Yes, I am an art collector”, and left it at that.

From $3.8 Mn To $200 Mn, Stolen Van Gogh, Raphael Artworks That Were Never Found

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The Art World

25 Jun, 2019

Earlier this month, a missing part of British monument Stonehenge (representative image) was returned to the historical site after 60 years. In the art world, however, once an artefact is stolen, it’s rarely found again.
(Text: Viandra D'souza)

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Van Gogh's 'Poppy Flowers'

25 Jun, 2019

Valued at: $55 million
One of Vincent van Gogh’s finest paintings of the poppy flowers, valued at $55 million, was stolen in 1977 from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo. It was recovered from Kuwait a decade later, but then in 2010, tragedy struck again, and the painting was targeted by thieves. It’s been 19 years and the hunt is still on. Billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris offered a $175,000 reward to anyone who could provide relevant information, but nobody has stepped up yet.

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Johannes Vermeer's 'The Concert'

25 Jun, 2019

Valued at: $200 million
Taken from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston in 1990, this stolen painting is said to be one of the most expensive in history. And to think it could all have been avoided. Security personnel at the museum allowed entry to two men posing as police officers. The duo took its time, and along with ‘The Concert’, also made away with Rembrandt’s ‘Storm of the Sea of Galilee’: The former is worth $200 million and the latter, $100 million. There is a $5 million reward, but other than speculation that the paintings have been circulated in organised crime circles in Connecticut and Philadelphia, nothing has been done to recover them.

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Paul Cezanne's 'View Of Auvers-Sur-Oise'

25 Jun, 2019

Valued at: £3 million ($3.8 million)
As the world marked the dawn of a new millennium, a thief broke into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, and stole Cezanne’s landscape painting, ‘View of Auvers-sur-Oise’. A few weeks later, detectives thought they had found it in a West Midlands pub, but it turned out to be a copy. Though its value has since shot up, the painting was not recovered.

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Caravaggio's 'Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence'

25 Jun, 2019

Valued at: $13 million
The ‘Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence’, painted in the year 1609 by Caravaggio, hung in the Oratory of San Lorenzo in the city of Palermo for centuries. In 1969, it was ripped off the walls by two unidentified raiders who cut it out of its frame, thereby making an entry to the FBI’s top ten list of stolen fine art. While the painting hasn’t been recovered, British artist Adam Lowe managed to reproduce the masterpiece in all its original glory. The original would today be worth at least $13 million.

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